Twin Peaks
Skeptics like to debate whether humanity’s way of entertainment has changed throughout recent centuries or not. Some claim that it never did, and just as…
review format
Whiplash Film Review
Whiplash (2014), directed and written by Damien Chazelle, is a film mainly about the relationship between a music teacher and his student, and what it…
The Hunger Games
Dystopia is not a new genre in literature and cinematography. Dystopian worlds have been described in the novels of such writers as Herbert Wells (the…
Fifty Shades Darker
Creating an erotic melodrama movie is an extremely delicate matter. There is a thin line between erotics and vulgarity, and an even thinner divide between…
Get Santa
By Matt Trueman Pity those parents with inquisitive kids, for they shall be faced with a barrage of whys after the Royal Court’s first ever…
Broken Embraces
By Valentine Rossetti Once more, the maestro of Spanish cinema, Pedro Almodóvar, gives us a heady mixture of suspense, stormy melodrama, and theatrically dramatic characters.…
An ‘Oliver!’ for the 21st century
By Matt Trueman Matilda’s got its own Spiderman in the first five minutes: a spoilt brat in crude, homemade fancy dress. The RSC’s homegrown musical…
A History of the World Since 9/11, by Dominic Streatfeild
By Patrick West Anti-Americanism has not always been the preserve of the liberal-left in Britain. In the UK, for instance, a not-uncommon response among conservatives…
Weirdo by Cathi Unsworth
By Nicky Charlish Every crime writer sets his or her fictional detective some challenges to face. With this book, she sets herself one, too: how…
Wuthering Heights
By David Birch The tagline of Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights—‘Love is a force of nature’—is almost too good. As a selling-point, it is best not…
Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk
By Jake Hollis Heard of Chuck Palahniuk? He wrote the novel Fight Club, more popularly known through the film it inspired, starring Brad Pitt and…
When The People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation
By Luke Gittos The upcoming general election will see the political class fighting for the attention of voters who appear to have given up on…
Letter from an Unknown Woman
By Timandra Harkness It is a glorious film, but you could not make it now. And that is not just my opinion. My preview screening…
Undertow
By Valentine Rossetti It is very rare to find a film where the sentiment stays with you for days after, but Undertow, the first feature-length…
Hamlet
By Matt Trueman Rory Kinnear’s Hamlet is a marked man; most definitely ‘the observed of all observers’. The Elsinore he inhabits is a surveillance state.…
The Education of a British-Protected Child, by Chinua Achebe
By Jo Caird 2008 was the 50-year anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart, the book that is widely regarded as the first African…
Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton
By Dolan Cummings Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland sees Lewis Carroll’s Alice returning to ‘Underland’ at the age of 19, falling down a hole in…
Mouchette, directed by Robert Bresson
By Dan Schneider Right on the heels of his great 1966 film, Au Hasard Balthazar, French film director Robert Bresson embarked on another exploration of…
3,096 Days by Natascha Kampusch
By Austin Williams The agonising and ultimately redemptive tale of the trapped Chilean miners captured the world’s hearts and headlines. At the time of writing,…
The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis
By Wes Brown Martin Amis burst onto the seventies literary circuit, an ‘enfant terrible’, only twenty-four and yet apparently fully-formed—The Rachel Papers (1973), Dead Babies…
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